Monday, May 19, 2014

Beyond an Absence of Faith - I'm in a book!

So there's this book that was just released that I'm particularly excited about - Beyond an Absence of Faith It's a collection of stories about people who've left religion and the impacts that has had on their lives. It was edited by Jonathan MS Pearce and Tristan Vick, which I can tell you is a good sign of the quality! It's even got a foreword by Jeremy Beahan of the Reasonable Doubts podcast, which is awesome considering how much that specific podcast helped me reground myself after deconverting.

So why am I excited about it? Because Johno asked me to contribute my own deconversion story to the book! I'm published in a book (though still using my pseudonym), which is something I never thought would happen. The version here is similar to my video/post on the matter, but with a bit more detail on my life before apostasy and on some personal aspects of the fallout that happened after.

What's better is that there are 15 other stories in the book, including ones by other online atheists I admire like Vyckie Garrison who escaped the Quiverfull Movement. It includes stories of apostates of different religions, and all of the stories here are honestly moving. It's frankly amazing what some people have gone through on their journey to apostasy. The book is less about arguing for atheism than it is about our respective journeys out of religion and finding ourselves again.

Kaveh Mousavi at On the Margin of Error wrote a very nice review of the book, and so far the reviews on Amazon have been quite kind as well. I'm a bit biased, but I highly recommend picking up a copy. It's in paperback and on Kindle.